The Oval - Where Desire Paths Became Sidewalks

A stop on Ohio State University Campus Walk, a free self-guided tour.

You are standing on about 11 acres of lawn that every Buckeye knows. The Oval was not in the first campus plans. A master plan of 1893 called for a central open space with no roads across it, and by 1901 the green had roughly the shape you see today. The Olmsted Brothers, the landscape firm founded by the sons of Central Park's designer, later gave it a more formal layout.

Look at the paths crisscrossing the grass. Students cut their own shortcuts between buildings, and many of today's walks follow those worn tracks. The broad Long Walk, laid in 1914, runs straight across the Oval to the library. In the 1920s and 1930s, freshmen were banned from it, and upperclassmen enforced the rule by tossing offenders into Mirror Lake.

Campus legend says that a couple who hold hands all the way along the Long Walk will one day marry. Try it, or simply sit on the grass and watch campus life go by.

Getting here: Start in the middle of the Oval, the large green at the center of campus between Thompson Library on the west and High Street on the east.

Did you know?: Ohio State opened in 1873 with just 24 students; its first graduating class, in 1878, had six men, and the first woman graduated a year later.

Photo op: Stand on the Long Walk facing west and frame the path running straight to the columned front of Thompson Library.

More on Wikipedia: Ohio State University · Olmsted Brothers · Mirror Lake

The Oval - Where Desire Paths Became Sidewalks

Stops on this tour